On Sunday I had a session with an experienced teacher of Persian and booked ten hours in advance for consultation during my self-study.

We worked on my pronunciation. After a time of error and correction I conceptualised vowel lengths as follows: a Persian short vowel is half of a Arabic short vowel and a Persian long vowel is the same as an Arabic short vowel.

I have painstakingly retyped my earlier sentences with your corrections - it takes me a long time! - and added new information in yellow. What new information do you learn about my family based what I've learnt from Ch.6?

I have painstakingly retyped my earlier sentences with your corrections - it takes me a long time! - and added new information in yellow. What new information do you learn about my family based what I've learnt from Ch.6?

Your brother is younger than your sister, and is the youngest kid in the family, and your sisters are the oldest. Don't forget to mark the ezaafe with a hamze or ya in "the youngest child of our family":بچهٔ فامیلمان or بچه‌ی فامیلمان

#10: although in English we can say "10 in the morning" or "10 at night" in Persian we say "10 of the morning", etc. So here your sentence should be الآن ساعت دهِ صبح است. Also, you wrote "10" (ده dah) but in the spoken version it sounds like you said "2" (دو do).

I would rate your pronunciation at 8 on the scale you gave. You stumbled a bit in the first and ninth sentences but otherwise I could understand you fine.

Just to be clear a house خانه اىThere is no plosive sound on the ه, correct?

What YouTube videos do you recommend I have a look at just to hear Persian spoken?

I have also downloaded Gabe Wyners illustrated vocab learning guide.

I was doing an experiment on this sound association thing via Google images.

Like, when I hear "dog" I know what I'm hearing. Kalb too - but the image in my head is different from "dog". For "dog" I see something cute. For kalb I see something mangy. For سگ I see something urban and gritty.

Talha wrote:Just to be clear a house خانه اىThere is no plosive sound on the ه, correct?

Correct. [khaane i]

What YouTube videos do you recommend I have a look at just to hear Persian spoken?

You could start with BBC Persian. I don't generally care for their politics but you can hear both formal and informal spoken Persian in their videos. Most of their newscasters are Iranian, though they sometimes have Afghan or Tajik hosts when they cover Afghanistan or Tajikistan. For Afghan Persian you can also check out the program Afghan Star.

Here's what I understood: "I like Lebanese food, but I don't like Japanese food."

That's exactly what I intended. But when you say here's what I understood does that mean I was unclear and you had to fill in mentally with approximation?

It would be good if there were Persian-learning textbooks (in English) aimed at those who have learnt Arabic for purposes like mine, that is study of texts (historical and literary - in my case) but not excluding a conversational element - perhaps something like Schulz. This would mean avoiding lengthy explanations of basic grammar terms like what is meant by 'subject, 'object' etc (although we wouldn't know these terms if we hadn't done any language learning in the past). Know anything like that?

For me, this was a helpful way to distinguish between objects of transitive and intransitive verbs:

Just a bit disappointed that I had to consult multiple sources at http://www.lexilogos.com/english/persian_dictionary.htm to see, for example, which words for 'back' referred to the body part and not direction. Would be nice if there was one basic online dictionary like en.bab.la for Arabic to give you full contextual definitions for words so you can pick the right one (plus have audios so I don't need to past into Forvo).

eskandar wrote:That's exactly what I intended. But when you say here's what I understood does that mean I was unclear and you had to fill in mentally with approximation?

No, it was clear enough. The one thing that gave me pause was that you should say ghazaa-ye when you have, for example, غذای لبنانی ghazaa-ye lobnaanii "Lebanese food", but you pronounced it more like ghazaa-ii which would mean "a food".

It would be good if there were Persian-learning textbooks (in English) aimed at those who have learnt Arabic for purposes like mine, that is study of texts (historical and literary - in my case) but not excluding a conversational element - perhaps something like Schulz. This would mean avoiding lengthy explanations of basic grammar terms like what is meant by 'subject, 'object' etc (although we wouldn't know these terms if we hadn't done any language learning in the past). Know anything like that?

That would indeed be great but I don't think such a textbook exists yet - Persian language pedagogy lags behind Arabic in many ways - but the closest thing might be Thackston's An Introduction to Persian. It's an excellent textbook for Persian, geared towards the student of classical Persian but without ignoring modern and conversational elements. John Mace's Persian Grammar (you may be able to find a free PDF of it online somewhere) is also very good.

Talha wrote:Are my word choices ok?

پیشخدم is wrong, it should be پیشخدمت. And پشت is a perfectly appropriate word for 'back' (the body part) but you can also get more specific - here the waiter is clutching his کمر (kamar, "lower back").

I keep the Farzad textbook open in two tabs on Chrome (I find the browser faster than Acrobat or Soda PDF readers). One tab is for the current work and the other is on the answer page. It is easier to move between tabs than to scroll up and down constantly.